The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
—Alexander Jablokov

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Stop Bugging Me!

I hate bugs. Except for maybe RolyPolys and Ladybugs. They're kind of cute.

The rest of them scare the doody out of me. There are a couple of bug stories that really freak me out.

Twenty years ago my older brother, who is a musician, traveled around the bar band circuit in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. The band didn't get paid much, but there were other perks----booze, groupies, the possibility of being discovered and becoming the next big hair band like Warrant or Faster Pussycat.

The band had been on the road for months, and my brother had been feeling pretty itchy for about a week. He thought he might be having a reaction to some of the hair products he'd been using, so at one overnight stop at a motel, he examined his scalp after taking a shower.

He had crabs. They all had crabs.

In fact, the lead singer had them so bad, they had infested his chest hair and----OMG----he had crabs crawling around in his mustache!

Eeek! I'm starting to itch all over just thinking about it.

The other story that freaked me out was in a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago, about a kid who had spiders in his ear. I think that was probably the worst bug story I'd ever heard.

Until today.

A man in Cambridge, New Zealand suffered buzzing, ringing and itching in one ear for almost two years. His doctor tried flushing the ear (to no avail), and he once got some temporary relief by having it suctioned.

He was finally sent to an ear specialist. The nurse took one look in his ear and called in the doctors.

'Centre director Theresa O'Leary said she was amazed to see an infestation of "very active, tiny, bulbous, semi-transparent mites moving around in a moist layer and white eggs present all over the canal and eardrum.

"There were about a 100 of them. It was a well-stocked breeding ground." 'AIGGGHHHHH!!!!!

"The infestation has stunned ear therapists and a clinical microbiologist who are unaware of any other documented cases of mites thriving and reproducing in a human ear."

Eeek. This reminds me. I once attended a poetry reading given by W. H. Auden (one of my faves) at McGill. He was very ancient, and so creased and rumpled it was almost impossible to tell where frayed tweed ended and epidermis began. All looked to be one entire garment of beat-up crocodile hide. I'm sure skin and clothes both were crawling with exhuberant tiny life.Here's the poem. Hope it doesn't squick you out too much:

A New Year Greeting

After an article by Mary J. Marples in Scientific American, January, 1969

On this day tradition allots to taking stock of our lives, my greetings to all of you, Yeasts, Bacteria, Viruses, Aerobics and Anaerobics: A Very Happy New Year to all for whom my ectoderm is as Middle-Earth to me.

For creatures your size I offer a free choice of habitat, so settle yourselves in the zone that suits you best, in the pools of my pores or the tropical forests of arm-pit and crotch, in the deserts of my fore-arms, or the cool woods of my scalp.

Build colonies: I will supply adequate warmth and moisture, the sebum and lipids you need, on condition you never do me annoy with your presence, but behave as good guests should, not rioting into acne or athlete's-foot or a boil.

Does my inner weather affect the surfaces where you live? Do unpredictable changes record my rocketing plunge from fairs when the mind is in tift and relevant thoughts occur to fouls when nothing will happen and no one calls and it rains.

I should like to think that I make a not impossible world, but an Eden it cannot be: my games, my purposive acts, may turn to catastrophes there. If you were religious folk, how would your dramas justify unmerited suffering?

By what myths would your priests account for the hurricanes that come twice every twenty-four hours, each time I dress or undress, when, clinging to keratin rafts, whole cities are swept away to perish in space, or the Flood that scalds to death when I bathe?

Then, sooner or later, will dawn a Day of Apocalypse, when my mantle suddenly turns too cold, too rancid, for you, appetising to predators of a fiercer sort, and I am stripped of excuse and nimbus, a Past, subject to Judgement.

Hi Attila,After my initial reaction of Eeewww! and clawing at my skin until it was red and raw, this is an informative post. I’ve heard all the jokes about “we’ve got crabs” and actually knew someone who picked them up from a dirty mattress but I didn’t realize it was possible to become so infested that they swarmed and crawled all over the body. I thought they stayed put around the groin.

And I’d no idea people could get ear mites. Both of my cats had them when I adopted them from the S.P.C.A., but after thoroughly cleaning their ears twice a day and administering the proper medication, the mites vanished. It never occurred to me that I might contact them…

Years ago I was attending a seminar and the gentleman sitting in front of me was infested with fleas or head lice; I could see scads of the microscopic buggers leaping around in this longish hair. After five minutes of being mesmerized by the display, I decided it’d be wise to remove myself to the other side of the auditorium before the critters attacked my scalp.

Pardon me; I’ve got to go take another shower to decontaminate myself….

Eeeewwwwwww!!!!! The nightmare images that have come to mind will haunt me as I itch and try to sleep tonight. I have dry skin. I itch. Now my imagination will run wild. My eyes will remain open. I will be haunted by creeping and crawling nightmare. Thanks :-)

I got this email and thought of you! Then I went and showered again for the 10th time today!

A woman was working in a post office in California . One day she licked envelopes and postage stamps instead of using a water sponge. That very day the lady found a cut on her tongue. A week later, she noticed an abnormal swelling of her tongue. She went to the doctor, and they found nothing wrong. Her tongue was not sore or anything. A couple of days later, her tongue started to swell even more, and it began to get really sore, so sore, that she could not eat or breath. She went back to the hospital, and demanded something be done. The doctor took an x-ray of her tongue and noticed a lump. He prepared her for minor surgery. When the doctor cut her tongue open, a live baby cockroach crawled out!!!! There was cockroach egg on the seal of the envelope when she licked it. The egg was able to hatch inside of her tongue, because of her saliva. It was warm and moist... This is a true story reported on CNN.

Andy Hume wrote: Hey, I used to work in an envelope factory. You wouldn't believe the....things that float around in those gum applicator trays. I haven't licked an envelope for years!" I used to work for a print shop (32 years ago) and we were told NEVER to lick the envelopes. I never understood why until I had to go into storage and pull out 2500 envelopes that were already printed and saw several squads of cockroaches roaming around inside a couple of boxes with eggs everywhere. They love to eat the glue on the envelopes.

Ok, I have to admit it - I actually like bugs. A few give me the willies, but I find most of them fascinating.

That doesn't mean I like them crawling around on me!

Earlier this year, the kids and I went to a walk in clinic. While we were waiting to see the doctor, we noticed a young man who'd just come in was behaving oddly at the counter. He'd be talking to the man behind the counter, then suddenly stop and start dancing around bizarrely, then talk some more, then dance around again.

It turned out that, just as he was walking past the clinic, something flew into his ear - and it was still there. He could feel it buzzing around (hence the dancing). Meanwhile, the guy behind the counter was getting his paperwork done. I was pretty tempted to tell them to forget the paperwork and get him into the doctor NOW. Yeah, we were supposed to see the doctor next, but we were more than willing to have him go ahead of us!